Corporate clout backs climate deniers…

COP21: Analysis of millions of words written on the climate debate show how powerful forces make the contrarian network turn a blind eye to scientific evidence.

PARIS, 1 December, 2015 − The quality and language of climate change denial can be predicted by ties to “elite corporate benefactors”, according to new research.

And that could explain why still only 44% of Americans believe climate change is happening, despite nearly all climate science research pointing in one direction: that greenhouse warming as a consequence of human activity is real.

Justin Farrell, assistant professor of sociology at Yale University in the US, writes in Nature Climate Change that semantic analysis and statistical techniques can identify “organisational power” within the contrarian network that has somehow persuaded US voters that scientists are “divided” on the issue of climate change.

Researchers have already made connections between money from unnamed sources and the contrarian lobby. They have also shown that, either subtly or openly, the denial lobby has influenced the language of discussion about climate issues. And they have confirmed that the denialists are saying things that are at odds with the science.

And his latest study − coinciding with yesterday’s opening in Paris of COP21, the UN summit on climate change − may help illuminate the disconnect between scientific concern and apparent political and public inertia. As US president Barack Obama said at the opening: “One of the enemies we will be fighting at this conference is cynicism.”

To establish the political and social processes that seem to drive doubt, denial and contrarian politics, Dr Farrell did more than just sample the so-called climate debate. He examined the lot.

He collected all the written and verbal texts that used the phrases “global warming” and “climate change” delivered between 1993 and 2013 by every contrarian organisation. These added up to 40,785 documents press releases, published papers, website articles, academic research and conference transcripts − totalling 39 million words.

“Climate sceptics and deniers are treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts – even though the scientists
who refute global warming are a minuscule number”

He then looked at what the US media had to say within the same period in 14,913 documents, and also 1,930 documents from three US presidents during the same period, and every mention on the floor of the US Congress − adding up to another 7,786 documents.

He then used statistical tools to try to establish connections. These involved terms that most people find migraine-inducing − such as least squares regression, singular value composition, and aggregated mean coefficient – to trace similarities between different texts and create a series of “family” connections in the language used. The study revealed, he writes, “a densely connected region, flanked by more loosely connected individuals and organisation”.

And from this, he found that organisations that received corporate funding from the oil giant or the Koch brothers’ foundations had significantly higher “betweenness centrality scores”. That did not mean that the most influential organisations were also the most generously funded.

Dr Farrell explains: “What matters most for whether or not an organisation is more centrally located within this network has less to do with their financial assets or the amount of donations they receive, but whether or not they had financial ties to corporate benefactors at all, thus signifying entry into a smaller circle of influence.”

He then studied the language of the presidency, congress and the media, and found something significant: that organisations with corporate benefactors were better at getting their message across to the media, and to the public.

The study has, he believes, broader implications for the privatisation of science, the inﬂuence of corporate lobbying around scientiﬁc issues and, by extension, the increasing concentration of corporate wealth in the US.

Public confusion

In parallel textual research, Diego Roman, assistant professor of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University in Texas, and a colleague have identified a second source of potential public confusion: the US school textbook.

They report in Environmental Education Research that they sampled four textbooks published in 2007 and 2008, and analysed 279 clauses containing 2,770 words discussing climate change. The overall message from the school texts was that climate change was possibly happening, that humans might or might not be causing it, and that it was not clear that mitigating action was needed.

They also report that only 33% of the US public thinks climate change is a serious threat. The textbooks misrepresented actual scientific discourse that sees climate change as an environmental problem of immense risk, where the human impact is clear and immediate action is warranted.

“Climate sceptics and climate deniers are given equal time and treated with equal weight as scientists and scientific facts – even though the scientists who refute global warming are a minuscule number,” Dr Roman says.
~~

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Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. ~Robert Ingersoll

All religion is a foolish answer to a foolish question. ~Thomas Shelby

The strongly religious fear our capacity for moral reasoning that does not require a magical, invisible deity. They fear our ability to be ethical without the threat of hell or the reward of heaven. They fear that our allegiance is not to this or that country, or this or that prophet, or this or that guru, but to humanity as a whole. ~Phil Zuckerman

The idea that God could only forgive our sins by having his son tortured to death as a scapegoat is surely, from an objective point of view, a deeply unpleasant idea. If God wanted to forgive us our sins, why didn’t he just forgive them? Why did he have to have his son tortured? ~Richard Dawkins

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

All religions are lies and scams, and all believers are victims. ~David Silverman

We [atheists] have no martyrs, we have no saints. ~Christopher Hitchens

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion. ~Jon Stewart

My 12th year was my most Christian and most boring year in my life. ~Chuck Berry

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. ~Umberto Eco

Christians don’t need to be born again, they need to grow up. ~John Shelby Spong

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

The only true definition of an atheist: a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in God or gods. ~Oxford English Dictionary

You have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Faith is just another word for gullibility.

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Resilience Tools (Basic)

Freethought/Stoics

Religion Divides

The Wikipedia of Christian Terrorism (Link)

Books of the Freethinkers Bible

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws… It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? -Zora Neale Hurston

Democratic Socialism

Socialist Alternative is the organization that spearheaded the campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council, the first independent socialist elected in a major U.S. city in decades. We are a national organization fighting in our workplaces, communities, and campuses against the exploitation and injustices people face every day. We are community activists fighting against budget cuts in public services; we are activists campaigning for a $15/hour minimum wage and fighting, democratic unions; we are people of all colors speaking out against racism and attacks on immigrants, students organizing against tuition hikes and war, women and men fighting sexism and homophobia.

We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business, and we are campaigning to build an independent, alternative party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.

We see the global capitalist system as the root cause of the economic crisis, poverty, discrimination, war, and environmental destruction. As capitalism moves deeper into crisis, a new generation of workers and youth must join together to take the top 500 corporations into public ownership under democratic control to end the ruling elites’ global competition for profits and power.

We believe the dictatorships that existed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were perversions of what socialism is really about.

We are for democratic socialism where ordinary people will have control over our daily lives.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated. ~Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Founder

In the history of the world, the number of times a supernatural anything has been proven true is zero. Every god, ghost, spirit, devil, possession, and miracle ever claimed true is a lie. No exceptions. The number of times an atheistic (godless) argument has been proven wrong by a theistic argument is zero... In contrast, every time a theist-versus-atheist argument has been settled, an atheistic argument has won. This does not mean science is antireligion; it just means (or rather, strongly implies) religion is wrong... I challenge anyone to find any scientifically valid testable proof of anything supernatural, ever. If you can prove it, even once, I'll quit my job. I'm not nervous, as it has never been done in history, because it's ALL a lie. ~David Silverman, President

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman